


A man made of Metal

by KingLilith



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Civil War Team Iron Man, Medical Inaccuracies, Not captain america friendly (implied), Tony Feels, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, mcu - Freeform, slight gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 04:38:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14012355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingLilith/pseuds/KingLilith
Summary: Tony has a hole in his chest where his heart should be.After Afghanistan. After the palladium poisoning. After everything, there’s still a hole in his chest.





	A man made of Metal

**Author's Note:**

> Machine men with machine minds and machine hearts.

Tony has a hole in his chest where his heart should be. After Afghanistan. After the palladium poisoning. After everything, there’s still a hole in his chest.

He is not dying anymore (not at the rate he was going anyway), but still his fingers find their way to the middle of his chest. The plate that holds in his ARC reactor is loose, it sits upon his skin like the lid of a pot (he will fix this, later, but not yet) and his fingers find the edge and pull. Not enough to completely dislodge the reactor, but enough for his finger to slip underneath (and down, down, down) where it is wet and warm and he can feel his body on the inside.

It hurts of course. But so does everything else, and it’s not so bad.

The damage to his body goes down far deeper than most people know. They see the little lid with a cheery glow and think that is it. Even Pepper doesn’t know (doesn’t want to know) how deep the hole in his chest goes. Tony does know, he likes knowing things. (The latest JARVIS self-update was successful, for any right-angled triangle the square of the length of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the lengths of the other two sides, I have a hole in my chest all the way down, the Starkphone screen upgrade increased the quarterly sales by 26%.)

Inside his chest it’s warm and soft, even the wetness is somewhat pleasant. But most of all, he can feel his heart beating a lot better when his fingers are near it. He can feel its steady (or not, it’s worse when it’s not) and uninterrupted beating (except when it isn’t, when it stops or skips, and he can’t _breathe_ ).

Things change. People move on. And Tony moves with them, ahead of them (but still with a hole in his chest, so wet and warm). He smiles and he laughs and he learns, and if late at night his fingers find their way to the inside of his chest nobody needs to know.

He builds a better lid. Waterproof, tight. Secure.

And rips it off straight away. Slips his fingers in to feel his franticly beating heart. (Still beating, still beating. But for how long?)

But he needs to do something. (What if someone found out? What if someone else slipped their fingers underneath that stupid lid?)

So in the end he starts building. Not a new reactor, but something even more delicate. It takes a long time but eventually (finally) Tony builds himself a new heart.

His father always did tell him stark men are made of Iron, now Tony has a heart to match.

 

He wonders how long it will take before someone breaks this one as well.


End file.
